Summer’s just around the corner. The sun is setting later, the temperatures are starting to rise, and people are itching to get outside. In Los Angeles, that opens up even more weekend entertainment options — including film.
Sure, there are a lot of options for watching a movie under the stars in L.A., from the Rooftop Movie Club to museums like the Skirball, but few spots are as iconic as Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
The L.A.-based group Cinespia programs outdoor movie screenings in a lot of great places around the city, but more than 20 years ago Hollywood Forever was their first location.
And post-pandemic, with theaters closing nationwide and younger and younger audiences flocking to repertory screenings like those held by Cinespia, the movies at Hollywood Forever are a must-do for any Angeleno.
Let’s start with the cemetery itself. Tucked between the Hollywood sign and the Paramount Pictures water tower, Hollywood Forever is a peaceful, inviting space alongside the bustle of Santa Monica Boulevard. Rolling green lawns surround the mausoleums with a beautiful water feature in the middle where you can often spot swans or turtles.
There’s a strong sense of life in the cemetery — a now infamous feral cat colony and numerous peafowl roam the grounds. And as one of the only cemeteries in Southern California that allows for grave markers to be upright or customized, there’s a strong sense of personality among the burial plots, from graves with markers that include gardening space, to markers shaped like sofas, rocket ships, or vinyl records.
On Saturday mornings, the in-house tour guide, Karie Bible, takes visitors through the grounds while bestowing a wealth of knowledge on the cemetery itself, and on the Old Hollywood legends interred within.
“As a little girl, I fell in love with classic Hollywood. My gateway drug was the Universal horror films of the 1930s,” says Bible. “I didn't like Barbie, but I loved Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff as every little girl should.”
Her tour includes the graves of character actors like Peter Lorre, cinematographers, screenwriters, cenotaphs like those of Jayne Mansfield and Hattie McDaniel, directors like Cecil B. DeMille, and of course, stars like Judy Garland.
Bible has been giving tours since 2002, just a few years after current owner Tyler Cassity purchased the cemetery. She describes Cassity as “a visionary in the cemetery world.”
Hollywood Forever was founded in 1899, and in 1931, a man named Jules Roth purchased a majority share of the cemetery. A convicted felon and white collar criminal who did time in San Quentin, Roth kept the cemetery segregated, not allowing Hattie McDaniel to be buried there, and used funds from the cemetery for personal use, leading to a state of disrepair in the 1980s. Roth died in 1998 and the cemetery was on the verge of closure in bankruptcy proceedings when Tyler Cassity and his brother bought the property.
Cassity’s tenure as owner led to renovations and restorations, community events, outdoor concerts, yoga classes, and of course — Cinespia screenings.
John Wyatt started screening films under the stars at Hollywood Forever the same year Bible started giving tours: 2002.
Wyatt, the founder of Cinespia, was looking for a place to screen classic and cult films, and something about being so close to Old Hollywood history was appealing. The cemetery signed off and it was an immediate success. The first screening was Strangers on a Train and it delighted audiences, cementing the partnership for more than two decades now.
The screening space is on the Fairbanks Lawn, near the grave of silent film star and United Artists founder Douglas Fairbanks Sr.
Don’t worry, no one is sitting on an actual grave to watch a movie. The lawn is a huge green space that can seat 4,000 picnicking moviegoers.
Cinespia screenings always feel like major events. People line up at the gates to get their favorite spots, bringing blankets, food, and wearing outfits for taking pictures in Cinespia’s film-of-the-week themed photo booth. People often get dressed up with costumes that reflect the movie that’s showing that night.
And when the sun goes down, the film starts.
“Being together in real life, being with your best friends, being with your partner, and just enjoying the greatest art that Hollywood made under the stars … it's really a beautiful experience,” says Wyatt.
During the pandemic lockdowns in 2020, Hollywood Forever closed to the public, deferred memorial services and turned to Zoom. Cinespia needed to find alternative, workable spaces for the screenings and started doing drive-in pop-ups at L.A. State Historic Park and Griffith Park near The Greek.
Those parks still host Cinespia screenings throughout the year. But there’s something about watching a movie in Hollywood Forever, so when Cinespia was allowed back in during 2021, Wyatt was thrilled with the response.
“It sold out almost immediately … and it was cathartic,” says Wyatt, recalling the long lines of people in front of the cemetery gates, waiting to return to their favorite spots on the lawn.
After showing films for 22 years, Wyatt does have a favorite to screen on the Fairbanks Lawn: the black and white Billy Wilder-directed classic, Sunset Boulevard.
“And the reason is it becomes this incredible meta experience because …. so many of the people in the film are buried at the cemetery. And when the main character starts yelling their names, it's echoing through the cemetery,” he says with delight.
In Sunset Boulevard, Gloria Swanson plays Norma Desmond, a famous silent film star who’s been left behind by the switch to sound. Her desire for stardom eclipses reality, and the film ends with one of the most iconic lines in film history, addressed to famed director Cecil B. DeMille, Swanson’s real-life mentor, who happens to be buried at Hollywood Forever.
“And then at the end, she addresses the crowd in her famous speech. And the thrill that runs through the audience when she says, ‘And to you, all you wonderful people in the dark,’” Wyatt recalls. “I have to control myself to not just show it all the time because it's such a cool experience.”
It’s all about the audience reaction for Wyatt, and that first hook when a moviegoer sees something great. “It's very satisfying if I can have one person be like, ‘Who's Billy Wilder? I got to see more movies.’”
Cinespia screenings at Hollywood Forever are starting up again on May 26 with the David Fincher thriller, Se7en, and movies will be running Saturday nights through the summer. Karie Bible’s cemetery tours are every Saturday morning at 10 a.m.
